" The idea of the “studio” is as much a fantasy as the idea of the “artist” is a fantasy.
Both cease to exist when the work begins.
If there is work, there is no studio, there is no artist.

The stage of the studio is necessary, though, to enjoy the tortures of procrastination,
for the enactment of the melodrama of solitude,
for the playing out of visual monologues.

It is an anachronistic luxury to have studio-time and studio-space for the celebration of perpetual creative crisis,
for the charging and discharging of moods, and for the invention of feelings.
Being aware of this probably accounts for always feeling slightly guilty while in there as well.

The studio is the claustrophobic vault of the self-feeding vampire.
It is the stew-dio ... an alchemic laboratory for inspiration, stagnation,
confrontation, resignation, procrastination, contamination, inflation,
reflection, intoxication, regression, invention.

The “studio,” with its excess of presence, invents the “artist,”
feeds pictures and movies to the hungry eye.
The raw silence at night. Poussin called it silence panique,
the empty canvases.

But the studio full of new paintings: hall of mirrors, royal pleasure, Versailles.

The studio initiates work as finally the only way out of the swamp of self.
The jump to action from the pull of the sofa is an act of survival,
a leap to freedom, the jump into the abyss, the fall into the sky.
It is breaking out of the prison of the studio into the freedom of the work." (uit: The Studio Reader, On the Space of Artists, uitg: University of Chicago Press, tekst: Charline von Heyl)

""From the mid 1990s, Kiefer’s Barjac studio-estate, which spread over 35 hectares (86 acres), also became his most ambitious project, where he made, displayed, warehoused and imagined his oeuvre. A former silk factory on a hill that the German expatriate transformed into a vast complex of living spaces, studios, workshops and storage facilities, it was also an environment in which he created a new type of ‘land art’ consisting of gigantic concrete structures, some reduced to post-war-like ruins, in the midst of the rural French countryside. For some, La Ribaute was Kiefer’s ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, or ‘total work of art’, a theatrical experience that combined multiple media and that stood as the pinnacle and sum-mation of his career.

As this studio complex developed over 17 years, it grew in shape and complexity. Originally consisting of three nineteenth-century stone buildings surrounded by fields and woods, it was expanded with a single-minded intensity to combine modern functional structures with strange, unwieldy, reinforced-concrete constructions. Since the late 1990s, more than fifty separate edifices – glass and steel greenhouses as well as concrete bunkers - were erected on the property; and, in the new millennium, an amphitheatre and a crypt were added as well as massive concrete towers, sculptural waves and freestanding staircases.

Paintings and sculptural installations were sited in the various buildings, and as the complex extended, it seemed like a palimpsest of forms and traces from multiple time frames. La Ribaute and its environs were also the vast set on which Kiefer ‘shot’ his photographs. A number of his new books and paintings were based on it, as well as the factory-like ‘alchemical forge’ where he allowed his artistic fabrications to age and transform. As Kiefer’s production increased, La Ribaute also provided a context for developing his various ‘houses’ and ‘greenhouses’ of art, structures that served as containers for different groups of work." (bron: Phaidon)

maandag, februari 24, 2014

"Thirty-five years ago Daniel Buren wrote a text entitled “The Function of the Studio,” which remains key in the artist’s career-long treatise on the “desertion of the studio and its implications” for artworks. In this early text Buren declared his rejection of the studio and a commitment to working in situ and allowing the physical context of the exhibition site to influence the artistic outcome, a modus operandi he has maintained throughout his career. In advance of the exhibition “The Studio” at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, in which he was a participating artist, Daniel Buren was invited to revisit this text." (Introduction from "The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists". (hk))

"Daniel Buren
The Function of the Studio

Of all the frames, envelopes, and limits—usually not perceived and certainly never questioned—which enclose and constitute the work of art (picture frame, niche, pedestal, palace, church, gallery, museum, art history, economics, power, etc.), there is one rarely even mentioned today that remains of primary importance: the artist’s studio. Less dispensable to the artist than either the gallery or the museum, it precedes both. Moreover, as we shall see, the museum and gallery on the one hand and the studio on the other are linked to form the foundation of the same edifice and the same system. To question one while leaving the other intact accomplishes nothing. Analysis of the art system must inevitably be carried on in terms of the studio as the unique space of production and the museum as the unique space of exposition.
Both must be investigated as customs, the ossifying customs of art.
What is the function of the studio?

1. It is the place where the work originates.
2. It is generally a private place, an ivory tower perhaps.
3. It is a stationary place where portable objects are produced.

The importance of the studio should by now be apparent; it is the first frame,
the first limit, upon which all subsequent frames/limits will depend.
...." (text: Daniel Buren)

"Daniel Buren
The Function of the Studio Revisited: Daniel Buren in Conversation

The function of the studio is absolutely, basically, the same as it always was. The studio as I defined it in 1971 has not changed, although perhaps more artists are escaping their studios today than when I wrote “The Function of the Studio.” Artists have a much looser idea of what constitutes a studio than they did in the early 1970s. However, I think it is still the main place of work for the majority of artists.
The function of the studio is the making of a work of art for an ideal place, a work which may be endlessly manipulated. If you work most of the time in a studio you produce works that are destined to be installed somewhere else. That was the key point of my text—in a studio you produce work to be shown anywhere—whether in a gallery, museum, or private collection—and you must work with a preconceived idea of what these rooms might be like, as the final destination of the work is totally unknown.
It is a different case when the artwork calls on the specifics of its location for its identity and completion and cannot be installed or seen in another place. This returns us to the idea of the site as an integral component of the work whereby it can only be understood at that site, which is in turn transformed by the artwork, forever or for the time that they are together. If the work is created thus there is a break from the idea and the idealism of the studio.
...." (text: Daniel Buren)

zondag, februari 23, 2014

John Baldessari’s studio with works gathered together in preparation for Cremation Project 1970.

"....
Like many experimental artists Baldessari began his career in the more traditional realm of painting. Rather than merely moving on from these early works, Baldessari decided in 1970 to have them destroyed.

n the summer of 1970 all paintings in the artist’s possession dating from the thirteen years 1953–66 were incinerated at a local crematorium. He took the precaution of making slides of most of them but the exact number of works destroyed is unknown.

Baldessari conceived of the destruction of his early works as an artwork in itself called Cremation Project and in a letter to a critic shortly afterwards he wrote, ‘I really think it is my best piece to date’." (bron: Tate, foto: John Baldessari)